4 ms·

Sure, ageism is bad. I'm in my 50s too and I've seen my share of hype cycles. But I think there is a danger of overreacting to the unbridled enthusiasm of young

Sure, ageism is bad. I'm in my 50s too and I've seen my share of hype cycles. But I think there is a danger of overreacting to the unbridled enthusiasm of younger people. Every new cyle comes with ideas that are similar to what we have seen before. Sometimes I find myself thinking, OK, been there, done that, doesn't work. But I suspect that there is a sort of experience bias that lets me see the similarities far more clearly than what's new and different. In every cycle people claim that it's nothing new and yet, with hindsight, we often find that small differences were important enough to change the world unpredictable ways. I think it has value for older folks to contribute arguments and perspectives, but let's not be too self-righteous about it. Similar ideas can lead to very different outcomes in a different context.

steveBK123 2y ago
One problem with ageism and youth bias in the industry is that we are still heavily populated with devs more interested in hopping on the latest framework they heard about at a conference than in actually solving users problems. The amount of "how do I justify a rewrite because our tech stack is bad" posts you see in your typical reddit/etc programmer forum would remind you of this.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > devs more interested in hopping on the latest framework they heard about at a conference than in actually solving users problems. The amount of "how do I justify a rewrite because our tech stack is bad" posts you see in your typical reddit/etc programmer forum would remind you of this. These are old complaints. My dad worked in the tech industry since the pre-Mosaic days, and even then you'd hear the same arguments and complaints. The same way people complain about React today is the same way people complained about Spring, and then about how old school C programmers complained about C++ with it "training wheels", and BASIC programmers complaining about "OOP", and old school networking types complaining about built-in TCP/IP instead of spinning up your own stack. Technologies and frameworks change. That's how tech always works. Sure I can demolish a building with a sledgehammer, but why not adopt dynamite or bulldozers if it efficiently solves the problem. At some point, all these complaints are just Ludditism from techies who didn't upskill and/or are unable to communicate.
  - mlinhares 2y ago
    I was there when both react and spring were both and they were both revolutionary tools, especially spring, the only people unhappy with it were the J2EE vendors, us plebs were calling out the name of the lord. I think the problem here is the usual bloat and enshitification that these tools eventually devolve to due to their success. People get so used to them they want to use them for everything and create this universe where you now forgot why they were created and the places they were useful.
    - steveBK123 2y ago
      With backwards looking rose tinted glasses, we can remember all the good tech people were slow to adopt. But what about all the mis-adopted or abandoned tech that blew up projects. The amount of stuff ported to NoSQL that had no business doing so. UML/Nocode tools in the 90s. A lot of the push away from Java only for a lot of performance considerations pushing devs back to it. Sorry about the projects that got force migrated to Scala since it was, briefly, The New Thing. The one man webdev app deployed firmwide on some brand new framework which was immediately deprecated. Again, nothing wrong with any of these tech choices if they were driven by actual user requirements which exceeded the current implementation tech. But most of us know that is rarely the actual motivation of devs...
      - mlinhares 2y ago
        While UML/Nocode tools were (and remain) a mistake, I don't think NoSQL was one. I might dislike some solutions in general but stuff like Redis, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Parquet and many others have produced a renaissance in databases that we would not have seen if it was all in the hards of the relational database vendors. MongoDB easy (in a way) replication put every single database vendor on watch and led even PostgreSQL to improve, i think we live in a different environment right now due to all the experiments the NoSQL folks made. It might not have all panned out but I think the whole thing was a huge positive for the market, people stated to experiment and try new stuff again instead of "oh it doesn't look like a relational model, it sucks".
  - 2y ago
silverlake 2y ago
> small differences were important enough to change the world unpredictable ways I completely agree with this. I’m also in my 50s but I lean techno-optimist. Whenever there’s a new hype cycle, I’m looking for those small differences that might overcome the hurdles we’ve seen in the past. For example, the PicturePhone was demoed in 1964. Now we’re all on Zoom constantly. I’ve lived through many AI hype cycles. The current LLM craze is significantly different from past exuberance. LLMs aren’t perfect but they are remarkable when they work.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Sinclair C5 vs modern e-scooters and other lightweight e-mobility is another good example. Same fundamental design approach, but needed another 25 years of improvement in battery and motor tech. IIRC the first electric car was proposed in the 1920s or thereabouts.

steveBK123 2y ago

One problem with ageism and youth bias in the industry is that we are still heavily populated with devs more interested in hopping on the latest framework they heard about at a conference than in actually solving users problems. The amount of "how do I justify a rewrite because our tech stack is bad" posts you see in your typical reddit/etc programmer forum would remind you of this.

alephnerd 2y ago
> devs more interested in hopping on the latest framework they heard about at a conference than in actually solving users problems. The amount of "how do I justify a rewrite because our tech stack is bad" posts you see in your typical reddit/etc programmer forum would remind you of this. These are old complaints. My dad worked in the tech industry since the pre-Mosaic days, and even then you'd hear the same arguments and complaints. The same way people complain about React today is the same way people complained about Spring, and then about how old school C programmers complained about C++ with it "training wheels", and BASIC programmers complaining about "OOP", and old school networking types complaining about built-in TCP/IP instead of spinning up your own stack. Technologies and frameworks change. That's how tech always works. Sure I can demolish a building with a sledgehammer, but why not adopt dynamite or bulldozers if it efficiently solves the problem. At some point, all these complaints are just Ludditism from techies who didn't upskill and/or are unable to communicate.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  I was there when both react and spring were both and they were both revolutionary tools, especially spring, the only people unhappy with it were the J2EE vendors, us plebs were calling out the name of the lord. I think the problem here is the usual bloat and enshitification that these tools eventually devolve to due to their success. People get so used to them they want to use them for everything and create this universe where you now forgot why they were created and the places they were useful.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    With backwards looking rose tinted glasses, we can remember all the good tech people were slow to adopt. But what about all the mis-adopted or abandoned tech that blew up projects. The amount of stuff ported to NoSQL that had no business doing so. UML/Nocode tools in the 90s. A lot of the push away from Java only for a lot of performance considerations pushing devs back to it. Sorry about the projects that got force migrated to Scala since it was, briefly, The New Thing. The one man webdev app deployed firmwide on some brand new framework which was immediately deprecated. Again, nothing wrong with any of these tech choices if they were driven by actual user requirements which exceeded the current implementation tech. But most of us know that is rarely the actual motivation of devs...
    - mlinhares 2y ago
      While UML/Nocode tools were (and remain) a mistake, I don't think NoSQL was one. I might dislike some solutions in general but stuff like Redis, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Parquet and many others have produced a renaissance in databases that we would not have seen if it was all in the hards of the relational database vendors. MongoDB easy (in a way) replication put every single database vendor on watch and led even PostgreSQL to improve, i think we live in a different environment right now due to all the experiments the NoSQL folks made. It might not have all panned out but I think the whole thing was a huge positive for the market, people stated to experiment and try new stuff again instead of "oh it doesn't look like a relational model, it sucks".
- 2y ago

silverlake 2y ago

> small differences were important enough to change the world unpredictable ways I completely agree with this. I’m also in my 50s but I lean techno-optimist. Whenever there’s a new hype cycle, I’m looking for those small differences that might overcome the hurdles we’ve seen in the past. For example, the PicturePhone was demoed in 1964. Now we’re all on Zoom constantly. I’ve lived through many AI hype cycles. The current LLM craze is significantly different from past exuberance. LLMs aren’t perfect but they are remarkable when they work.

Earw0rm 2y ago
Sinclair C5 vs modern e-scooters and other lightweight e-mobility is another good example. Same fundamental design approach, but needed another 25 years of improvement in battery and motor tech. IIRC the first electric car was proposed in the 1920s or thereabouts.